The inspired method Reese Witherspoon used to become a multi-millionaire industry giant
When we think of the movie industry’s greatest film producers, the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Marvel’s mastermind Kevin Feige instantly spring to mind. Yet, whilst the success of these individuals is well documented, one producer who doesn’t get the plaudits she deserves is Reese Witherspoon, the American actor who has over $400million to her name, making her one of the wealthiest actors in the industry.
Witherspoon is best known for her roles in front of the movie cameras, appearing in such classic films as 1999’s Election, 2001’s Legally Blonde, and 2005’s Walk the Line, for which she won an Academy Award. Yet, whilst she isn’t so prominent on the silver screen any longer, Witherspoon is making all her money behind the scenes, largely thanks to her lucrative book club, which has a massive following on social media.
She first took to the producer’s chair for Legally Blonde 2, seeing the follow-up to her hugely successful 2001 film as a lucrative project. Failing to capture the critical or commercial success of the original, the film only made $125.9million from a $45million budget, but this was enough for Witherspoon to see the value in being a producer, setting up the production company Pacific Standard in 2012.
Ever since the very start of the cinema industry, Hollywood had been run by men who sidelined female stories and put gallant male characters front and centre, but Witherspoon was eager to upend this structure.
As the actor and producer told Glamour magazine: “Men rise through the ranks because of potential, but women have to prove themselves—while trying to have children and having no family leave. No woman’s getting hired because of her potential. I hope that we can invest more in female potential”.
On the importance of female writers telling female stories, she added: “More people telling stories leads to more interesting perspectives in this world. I often think we wouldn’t get to these political impasses if we had balance in storytelling. If more men would see a story of what it was like to be pregnant, and how it felt to be in a place where you had to make a decision about whether to keep a pregnancy, maybe they would feel differently about women’s health care”.
Striving for a different set of standards that put female characters at the forefront of some of the year’s most significant cinematic projects, Witherspoon used her online book club as a way to encourage writers to collaborate.
As she told Variety in 2014, “I let it be known I wanted to see material…And because we’re specifically looking for female-driven properties, I don’t think a lot of other companies were out there doing that”.
Having set out the parameters of what she was after, suddenly Pacific Standard became a magnet for the best up-and-coming novels in the industry, with Witherspoon getting her hands on Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 novel Wild long before it was published. Two years later, the movie adaptation was in the cinemas, with Witherspoon taking the lead role, earning herself an Oscar nomination in the process, as well as $52.5m at the box office.
More success came Witherspoon’s way at the very same time, with the actor and producer gaining access to Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl before it hit the shelves in 2012. Adapted into a movie by David Fincher, with Witherspoon in the producer chair, Gone Girl was a massive hit, adding considerable credibility to the actor’s studio.
As a result, her book club gained considerable traction, with Witherspoon adding multiple titles to vast reading lists. But, these weren’t just any old books; to many millions of followers across the world, Witherspoon was promoting books that she would soon be turning into TV shows and movies, creating an audience for her own forthcoming content before a trailer had even dropped.
Such a close relationship between movie and book sales was previously unheard of in the industry, with Witherspoon pioneering an ingenious and novel way to market her own work whilst elevating female-led literature simultaneously.
So, how does Reese Witherspoon make her millions?
With over 2.5 million subscribers to her book club, Witherspoon approaches publishers of some of the most promising upcoming titles from female authors and promises that she will promote the novel on her platform. This results in mass sales of the book for the publishers, and in exchange, Witherspoon negotiates the rights to adapt the novels into feature films and TV series.
Once the rights are secured, she works as a producer with such companies as Apple TV, HBO and Sony to get such titles as Big Little Lies, Where the Crawdads Sing and The Last Thing He Told Me onto the big and small screen. When they’re ready to go out to the world, such aforementioned titles already have the audience, with Witherspoon having curated a buzz thanks to her book club having promoted the novel many months previously.
To get technical for a moment, in theory, Witherspoon’s book club has become an A/B testing platform, where she trials whether a book will be a popular adaptation or not by sending it out to her subscribers. Her subscribers then validate which book is the ‘best’, and then this novel is prioritised for a TV or movie adaptation, with Witherspoon gaining money from production companies to go out and make the, often award-winning, content.
Much of the money which is gained by Witherspoon is then circled back into the book club, creating a continuous cycle of success for her and Pacific Standard. It’s shrewd management indeed.
